


Be Right Back

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Clones, F/F, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 17:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14982404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: In which, following a mission gone wrong, Ava dies, and a new Ava clone shows up to replace her days later. Only without Rip they can't give her back the memories of the old Ava and Sara's grieving process never accounted for a stranger that wears the face of the woman that she lost.





	Be Right Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AppropriatelyStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppropriatelyStupid/gifts).



> loosely inspired by the black mirror episode with the same name.
> 
> technically a gift for melissa, i spent like three months working and reworking this fic idea until finally i just cut the bits i didnt like and im posting it. hope someone enjoys this. 
> 
> (not beta'd)

People always say that it's supposed to get easier with time.  

Sara’s certain that by now she's lost enough that she should have expected this.

In truth, a part of her had always known that this was inevitable.  

That good things for her were never meant to last. They never had been. Not for her.

But she hadn't been able to help it, hadn't been able to resist clinging to the one good thing that she had, the one person that was hers and hers alone.

Until she wasn't.

Until she was gone.

It was the days that came after that had hurt the most. The awareness that Ava wasn't just away at the moment, busy with some sort of Time Bureau business, but that she was truly  _ gone _ . That Sara wasn't going to be able to wake up one morning to the woman she loved still by her side.

She's lost people before.

Lost a lot.

Lost so much that that another blow so soon after her father, and Rip, and Stein, and sister… It’s harder to handle.

Especially when that loss is Ava.  

“You don't have to do this. You don't have to be here.”

It’s Ray that's with her, because he always wants to help, and because he's lost enough that he's almost used to the expression Sara’s been wearing for the past week. 

“Where else would I be,” Sara asks.

Ray frowns at her just a little. “You could go back to the ship. Gary and I are more than capable of-”

“No,” Sara cuts him off. Harsher than she had originally intended to judging by the way he frowns a moment later. “No, I can handle this,” and even if she couldn't. “I have to.”

She is supposed to be moving on.

Even if it hurts.

Especially because it hurts.

Ava wouldn't want her to spend her life missing her and forgetting to live. 

Ava would want her to move on. 

And this...

This was the first step in that process.

Packing up Ava’s things, because she didn't have a family to mourn her and pack that bits and pieces of her life away. Because the closest thing Ava had to a family was them, Gary and the Legends and  _ Sara _ .

That had been enough.

At least, before.

Now it felt like not nearly enough, an empty apartment with a thin layer of dust already beginning to cover things. An apartment that Sara knows so well that it might as well have been her own, which made sense, considering the numbers of nights that she had spent here with Ava.

If she ignores Ray and Gary packing things away, it could almost feel like she was back on another one of their date nights. That Ava might come around the corner at any moment with a bottle of wine and a familiar smile on her face. 

But she doesn’t. 

But she isn’t.

But she never will again. 

The realization hits her hard in the chest. Such that she can't help but gasp out, can't help her hands from shaking as she struggles to put the small mementos of Ava’s life away. One more way the bury her.

“Sara?”

She's not certain which of the guys say her name, it's hard to tell over the roaring in her ears, the rush of hurt that stings at her eyes in a way that's far too familiar now.

“I'm fine,” she says, even though her voice is tight and they all know its a lie. “I just need a drink.”

Sara's not even entirely certain herself whether she means water or something stronger until she's padded into the kitchen. Most of Ava’s dishes were packed away the day before, Gary carefully wrapping them all in paper, as though it even mattered. As though someone one day might come to claim those chipped floral plates that Ava had held so near and dear, rather than them rotting away in a Time Bureau storage pod for all of eternity.

Sara takes one of the glasses from the box, unwrapping it from its paper before turning on the faucet. 

If Ava was here she would complain about Sara not using the filtered water, make some quip about the dangers of Star City’s tap water.

But Ava wasn't here, and so the lecture never came.

Sara turns off the faucet and brings the glass up to her lips. Chugging down the barely cool water as if it will offer her some sort of clarity.

It doesn't.

Not really.

But it distracts from the tears for a moment, so she takes what she can get. 

It’s only as she’s setting her glass down that she notices something amiss. At first her brain writes it off, the box is big enough for a refrigerator, but Ava’s is still plugged in, whereas this box is taped off, carefully wrapped away. 

She cannot properly explain what it is, a feeling tight in her chest, a sign that something is wrong. But it’s there. But it lingers. And Sara moves without thinking, setting her glass down on the counter and stepping around the countertop to where the box is sitting.

Sara barely registers calling out for the guys, but she must have because they’re both there a second later, staring down at it with her.

It’s a box.

A box large enough to fit a refrigerator… Or a body.

A box with a logo too hauntingly familiar for Sara to ever forget. A part of her finds it almost ironic that the only two other people still alive to have seen this logo, a name that she missed like a limb in  _ that  _ specific font, were standing right next to her. All three of them staring at the box with expressions near to horror.

“How long has this been here,” Sara asks. 

“It wasn’t here yesterday,” Gary insists. “At least, I don’t think so…”

That was entirely unhelpful.

She shoots him a glare as if to say so, which only earns her Ray’s concerned, “Sara?”

“What is it,” she snaps, harsh once more.

It’s easier to be harsh that to deal with the feelings inside of her chest. The ones that linger unwelcome and sudden, fearing that she knows all too well what is inside of that box. 

Ray doesn’t flinch, just says, “There’s a note.”

He’s right. 

She only notices it once he points it out, reaching out for a letter addressed to  _ Mr. Hunter  _ apparently the future not having gotten the memo that Rip was gone as well. She rips the envelope open with haste, holding tight onto the paper within. 

Her eyes blur a little reading the letter, but the message is clear, even if the words don’t seem willing to stick properly in her head. Bolded words like  **under warranty** and  **replacement** stick out so clearly that there’s no way she could miss them.

No way she could misunderstand exactly what was inside of that box.

“This has to be a joke,” Sara says, because there’s no other option. 

The letter from the future falls out of her fingers, onto the ground, something she only registers when Gary crouches down to grab it. She wants to tell him not to touch it. Not to read out loud the words that she still refuses to acknowledge.

But there’s no avoiding it.

The truth that’s right in front of them. 

Separated by only the layers of heavy duty cardboard between them.

So different from the coffin they had buried  _ her  _ Ava in only days before.

“This isn’t real. This can’t be real.”

  
  


*

  
  


It is real.

Something that is a lot harder to deny sitting in the Waverider’s medbay with the box open. 

Sara can’t bring herself to look at the contents of the box. She had when they first opening it, and for a second it had looked almost normal, like Ava was just sleeping there. But it wasn’t… This wasn’t normal. This was a copy of the woman she had loved and lost, not the real one, some perverse copied version of her that would never be right.

Waiting now for someone to turn her on. 

“What are we going to do with it,” Zari asks, the question that’s on everybody’s mind.

The one question that Sara has been trying to avoid thinking about. 

“Her, I mean,” Zari corrects herself a moment later.

Sara shakes her head. “ _ It _ . This isn’t Ava, despite the fact that it looks just like her. It’s not… It won’t ever be.”

“Maybe you should go lie down,” Ray suggests soft and concerned. 

“No, I -” She’s not certain how to finish that sentence so she doesn’t.

Instead she casts a glance back at the box, catching a small glimpse of blonde hair as she does so. This doesn’t make it easier. She was supposed to be moving on. Ava would have wanted her to move on, and this… This wasn’t helping.

She’s not certain what this was.

But having a clone of her girlfriend appear had never been part of the planned grieving process. 

“We could just activate her and see what happens,” Nate suggests after a moment's pause.

“No,” Sara says, quickly, too quickly judging by the six concerned looks that earns her in return. “No, everyone out.”

The team doesn’t have to be told twice. Scattering out at their captain’s harsh tone, and leaving Sara alone with it.

With  _ her _ .

For the first time since they opened the box Sara forces herself to look properly at it. At the woman within. She’s wearing one of those blue jumpsuits, the type that the Ava’s from the future had worn. The ones that had tried to attack them. The ones that had been pale imitations of the woman that she loved.

This was just another one of those.

Factory default.

All of its original settings in place.

A blank slate.

Nothing like the woman that Sara was missing.

But  maybe… Perhaps.

She hates herself a little for thinking it. But there’s a part of her that is desperate for a happy ending. A part of her that remembers the way  _ her  _ Ava would stress about those that had come before. Lives that she had lived without knowing anything different.

A copy.

Flawless.

Nearly the original.

So close that nobody would have noticed.

If Rip had been able to do it then surely.

“Gideon.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Could you - I mean, Is it possible - Hypothetically speaking of course,” Sara says, tripping over her own words.

Unable to ask the question that her traitorous mind is all too desperate to know the answer to.

Gideon seems to understand her without Sara needing to say the exact words. Seems to know exactly what she needs, what she wants even though she knows that she shouldn't.

“It wouldn’t be a perfect recreation, I’m afraid. Captain Hunter deleted the files from my memory bank before his passing. I could fabricate something similar, but there will be gaps. It wouldn’t be the Director Sharpe that we knew.” Gideon says, adding in an almost softer tone a moment later, “I’m sorry, Captain.”

There’s no reason to feel disappointed. She should have expected this. And yet… She had let herself foolishly imagine that it was possible. 

That she could close her eyes for a second and have  _ her  _ Ava back. That she could have the woman she loved back by her side. 

But she couldn’t. 

Her Ava was gone.

And all she could ever have would be a pale imitation of the woman she lost. The features that she knew almost better than her own, rearranged in a way that just feels slightly off, an imperfection in a woman made for perfection. 

At least, here with just Gideon for company, Sara doesn’t have to hide the sorrow from her voice. “It’s alright.”

  
  


*

  
  


Her resolve lasts a week.

Which, in the grand scheme of things, feels like an accomplishment.

There’s a mission that goes wrong and Sara needs something.  _ Someone _ . She needs Ava, and sitting there in the medbay waiting for Gideon to patch her up after having been needlessly reckless again, only proves her point.

Only brings her back to this.

To a box that seems to be staring her down.

“Fuck it.”

What’s the worst that could happen?

“Captain?”

“How do I turn it on?”

There’s a long pause. As if Gideon was trying to think of a way to talk Sara out of this. As if that were even possible at this point. No, she had to do this. Had to at least try and even if the memories weren’t perfect, even if… It would be close enough.

It had to be close enough.

“I feel as though I should-”

“How do I turn it on,” Sara repeats, in the tone she uses when she’s properly being the  _ Captain  _ of the Waverider. The one that offers little room for argument. 

Thankfully Gideon doesn’t try to argue.

“I can upload the gathered metadata from here,” Gideon offers. “But according to the pamphlet the ideal activation points are ones in which the Ava unit can be submerged in water.”

It’s all so clincial, so matter of fact.

Sara feels that way too.

Looking down at the  _ woman  _ in the box, the one that felt more like a very expensive toy rather than her girlfriend, but if there was a chance… If there ever was a chance to get her Ava back. Surely it would be worth it to try. 

“The bathroom-”

“Unoccupied.”

“Right,” Sara nods once, then once again. 

She’s lighter than Sara would have expected. As if her bones were hollow, her body empty, so much lighter than the body that she had pulled from the field desperately into this very same medbay, fingers stained with blood that wasn’t her own, as if holding on could have somehow brought her back.

It didn’t.

Not really.

Despite the almost familiar feeling of the body in her arms. 

The bathtub is already running by the time she makes it in there, Gideon having made sure to have the room prepped, as well as having made certain that Sara didn’t run into anyone on the way here. She’s not certain what they would’ve said. Which ones would have offered to help and which would have tried to convince her that this was morally wrong.

It wouldn’t have mattered.

Her mind is set.

She is going through with this regardless of what anyone else might think.

It’s easier once this Ava is in the tub, submerged in the water, waiting for Gideon to upload her metadata properly. All Sara has to do is wait.

She settles alongside the tub, leaning against it such that her back is to whatever is going on in the water as she waits. Breathes in and out to a count of seven, almost meditating, like she had been trained to in the League.

But with an undercurrent of anticipation.

Waiting for time to pass. 

Time seems to move slower here.

Stretching on endlessly.

Despite the fact that Sara knows better.

Seconds feel like minutes, that feel like hours, that feel like lifetimes, before finally something happens. 

A splash of the water, a gasp out as if one was breathing air for the very first time, and a her name spoken in a voice that sounds so familiar she cannot help but cry. “Sara?”

  
  


*

  
  


She looks like Ava.

She dresses like Ava.

She talks like Ava.

Sara is half certain that she would even  _ kiss  _ like Ava.

But she’s not… No matter how much Sara wants her to be, there’s something that is off. Something that is not quite right. 

She can see it in the way the rest of the team looks at her. Eyes lingering on Sara with concern, Ray’s gentle comments about how this wasn’t exactly the best coping mechanism, as if he was really one to talk. 

She wants to ignore them. The team’s very much valid concern. To focus on the good thing that’s presented right in front of her. A second chance at happiness. 

Surely, she deserved this. 

It would be so easy to just pretend.

To let her live in innocent bliss.

But she can’t - she can’t look at this woman that is not Ava, but just nearly, and pretend that everything is alright. 

“We need to talk,” Sara says, choosing her words carefully. 

This Ava does not look entirely shocked by the words, sitting there in Sara’s office in a set of borrowed clothing. There’s a glass of scotch in her hands that she hasn’t been drinking, in fact, Sara’s noticed that she hasn’t ate or drank anything at all, almost as though she didn’t need to. 

Maybe she didn’t.

“I’ve you say heard those words before,” Ava says. Her smile is familiar, a little sad, a little careful. The way her Ava’s smiles had been after they first stopped Mallus, when they were trying to figure themselves out again.

“No, you haven’t,” Sara says without thinking.

Ava blinks at her. As if startled for a second, before agreeing. “No, I guess, not technically, not this me.”

“You’re number thirteen,” Sara says, because once she’s stopped she can’t stop it, “You’re not real.”

Her Ava would have had a crisis over this.  _ Did  _ have a crisis over this. Sara had been there for all of it. The terrible realization that she was just one among many, somehow finding new and worse ways to chip at her own insecurities. 

She had told Sara about it all, late one night, how she could barely stand to look at herself, how the nightmares of 2213 had only been getting worse lately.

But this Ava… She never had those nightmares.

Did she even dream at all?

Sara didn’t know.

Didn’t want to ask.

“I am aware of that, Miss Lance,” Ava says, soft almost. As if  _ Sara  _ was the one that needed to be confronted with this truth. “I understand that I am a replacement for your team’s previous Ava unit, and I-”

“Not the team’s,” Sara cuts her off.

This finally earns her a confused look. 

“What do you mean?”

_ Mine _ , she wants to say.

But she can’t make the words come out. 

Instead, she asks a different question. “What did the data Gideon uploaded to you say about the Time Bureau?”

  
  


*

  
  


It's a thin excuse that she feeds to the Time Bureau. An anachronism, a mistake, but then again when didn't the  _ Legends  _ makes mistakes. 

Nobody questions it too much. More than happy to have their director back appearing safe and sound.

A bunch of suits that feel more like clones than the woman that she once held in her arms. 

She's not certain if she feels better or worse seeing how easily Ava slips back into her role. Almost as if she had ever left it at all. As if she was made for exactly this. 

She was.

Technically.

This is what Rip had wanted, the perfect agent.

It was Sara that had diverted her programming, that had changed her, that had made her into so much more than what she was programmed to be.

But now…

She tells herself that this is better.

That this is healthy.

That this is the closest she's going to get to moving on.

The team seems to rest easier without Ava lurking around. A breath of relief that spills out through their ranks. Easier, as if a weight has been taken off all of their shoulders.

This is better.

This is supposed to be better.

Ava can still be  _ Ava _ .

She can still do her job at the Time Bureau, still be the Director Sharpe that everyone expects her to be. Sara just won't get involved. 

She makes a plan to stick to the ship. 

To avoid Star City at all costs, which admittedly isn't hard since she had been avoiding it for the vast majority of her life. 

To try not to think about how empty her bed seems to be, even now as she's beginning to get used to a blank space that someone else used to occupy. 

To keep things professional in her calls to the Bureau, the hardest of them all, because the woman she loves may be dead and gone now, but there's another with her face staring right back at Sara and it's hard enough just to remember to breathe. 

To move one.

  
  


*

  
  


She should have known better than to think that she could just avoid Ava and go on with her life. When had  _ Ava  _ ever not wiggled her way in, broken down Sara’s carefully constructed walls, and stirred up feelings that felt like anger but had always been so much more.

Technically it's Sara’s fault.

The  _ Legends’   _ fault.

A mission gone wrong. A level three escalated to a level eight and involving a dragon as well as a certain familiar fugitive of time. 

And it's a mess.

Sara knows it is.

She's well aware that the situation is only getting worse, that Constantine actually had no clue how to defeat a dragon, that Mick’s only managed so far to piss it off, and that Ray is hiding the root of this whole mess in his room while doing his best to lie, but it's not…

It's a mess, sure.

But it's her mess.

And Ava is here - strict and professional Ava, number thirteen, more similar to the woman that she had first met with a gun pressed to her head than the woman that used to text her goodnight every night that they were apart.

“If your team needs to be put on suspension for the good of time,” Ava says, voice all authority, and Sara remembers when that used to turn her on.

It still does a little, if she's being honest with herself.

Her face must betray her thoughts because a second later Ava stops her tirade to shoot a questioning look in Sara's direction - “What’s so funny, Captain Lance?”

“It’s nothing,” Sara says.

Ava’s skeptical look only remains. 

She's always been weak for  _ that  _ look. “Fuck it’s just - before I - when we…” She feels a bit like a teenager, all embarrassed when she has no right to be. Not with Ava, not with  _ any  _ Ava. “Before when you were annoyed with me I used to shut you up by kissing you, and I was just thinking about doing that again.”

The puzzled look disappears. Replaced instead with something like a smile. Still a little annoyed but familiar in a way that makes Sara ache. “Why don't you?”

She shouldn't.

There's so many reasons why this is fucked up.

But then again, when has Sara ever been good at making rational decisions. Especially when it came to  _ Ava _ . 

“Oh fuck it.” 

  
  


*

  
  


She looks like Ava.

She dresses like Ava.

She talks like Ava.

She kisses like Ava.

She feels like Ava.

She  _ fucks _ like Ava.

This Ava is not her Ava.

She knows that.

Knows that better than she's ever known anything.

But she close enough that sometimes Sara can pretend.

And some days that's enough.

  
  


*

  
  


Until she can't.

She's not sure how it starts. A little thing. A  _ fight  _ almost, by the terms of any normal relationship, but they're both so far from normal that Sara doesn't feel right using the word. 

A part of her wants this.

Needs this.

Needs it to feel real.

But the person she needs is long since gone, and the thing that stares back at Sara may wear her Ava’s face, but holds none of the emotions that normal would brew beneath the carefully crafted visage. 

For all of Sara’s ranting all she gets in return is the look of a woman listening intently instead of well justified anger.

Suddenly what they're supposed to be fighting about doesn't even matter - “What's wrong with you?”

Ava blinks back at her, caught off guard for the first time. “I don't understand.”

Of course she doesn't. 

“You're not supposed to just sit there,” Sara says sharply, “You’re supposed to be angry! You're supposed to tell me how wrong I am! Or kiss me until I shut up, something or-”

There’s lips pressed against hers a second later, and it's not what Sara wants. She knows that at once. A feeling like ice water dumping over her.

Sara jerks back sharply away from Ava - “Get out.”

Ava’s “Okay,” is so matter of fact that it catches Sara off guard enough that she doesn't think to stop her.

Barely even registers Ava rising out of the bed until she is nearly at the door.

The “No” that falls from Sara's lips is too loud and too sudden, but it comes all the same.

Ava stilling at the sound of her voice, turning around almost robotically. “I'm confused again.”

“My Ava wouldn't have just left,” Sara explains.

“But you said to-”

“She would've stayed and tried to talk about it.”

She seems to register that before taking a hesitant step back in Sara’s direction, and offering another, “Okay.”

“No, I- Fuck, do you even fucking have unique thoughts of your own?”

It's wrong.

It's all wrong.

Her Ava would have stayed, would have wanted to talk it, would have known how to bring Sara back down, but this isn't her Ava.

This has never been her Ava.

“Hit me.”

The alarm on Ava’s face at least feels familiar, “What? No!”

“Hit me,” Sara says again. “It’s an order or whatever or what are you not allowed to hurt your  _ owner. _ ”

It hardly feels like a success when this Ava flinches back from her words. Looking more hurt than she has a right to be. More real than Sara can handle.

She looks away, guilt already making her chest tight.

It doesn't help when Ava speaks in a voice so soft that Sara could almost miss it, “No, I’d never hit the woman that I love.”

“You don't love me,” Sara insists. “Not this version of you.”

“I'm trying to,” Ava replied. So honest that the tears that had been burning at Sara’s eyes for far too long only get worse.

“Sometimes I wished I had never took you out of that damn box.”

Ava lets out a small noise. Hurt almost. If she ever could be - “Sara, I-”

This time when she says “Get out” she lets Ava leave without stopping her.

  
  


*

  
  


“Captain Lance.”

She wakes to the sound of Gideon’s voice, tries to ignore the press of sadness in her chest when she remembers why the other half of her bed is empty and cold.

“Yes, Gideon?”

“Director Sharpe has been sitting in the bathroom for the past few hours and the team is rather aggravated with her refusal to leave, perhaps you could-”

“The fuck,” Sara says, nearly tripping over herself in her need to get out of bed. She barely manages to remember to pull on a pair of pants and a loose t shirt in her haste to get out of her room.

She had told Ava to leave last night.

Clearly something had gone wrong in her  _ instructions. _

She had expected Ava to go back to her apartment, back to the Bureau, back  _ somewhere  _ else.

Not here.

Not sitting in the Waverider’s one bathtub.

Looking far too similar to a scene that she had seen months before.

Back when she started this whole mess.

“What are you doing?”

Ava seems not to have noticed Sara’s presence until that exact moment. Blinking back to herself, turning so that she could look at Sara over the side of the tub.

“I've returned to my activation point.”

“You're what?” 

“My activation point,” Ava repeats, as though that clears anything up. 

It doesn't.

“What's the mean,” Sara asks.

There's a touch of familiarity and sarcasm in Ava's voice when she replies, “At the risk of blowing your mind, it's the point where I was activated.”

Sara can't help but laugh.

The first real laugh she's had in a long time.

Ava's smile is soft in return.

It almost feels like normal, until Sara asks, “Why would you do that?”

This time Ava looks away. Almost ashamed. “The deactivation process is easiest to achieve when at the activation point. I assumed from our encounter last night that you were dissatisfied with me and would be wanting a replacement Ava unit.” 

Sara can read between the lines, can see what she isn't saying:  _ that you don't want me _ .

“A replacement?”

“That is typically how warranties work,” Ava explains. “My activator will be sent a new unit once I’m returned for my factory defects.”

“You're not defective.” 

The smile she gets in return is soft and sad. “I'm not what you wanted.”

No.

She wasn't.

They both knew that.

“What do you feel for me,” Sara finds herself asking. Because  _ this  _ answer she needs to know. More than anything else.

“All Ava units are programmed to be protective of their activator.”

“Don't call me that.”

“I don't know, I think it's kind of sexy.”

Another joke.

But it's harder to laugh this time.

“That's really all then?”

Ava pauses. As if she's trying to think. Sara waits without question. Waits until eventually she does speak. 

“There's a memory,” Ava says. “Or something almost like it. I must have really loved you, in that other life.”

That hurts most of all.

It's like losing her Ava all over again.

And Sara cannot stop the tears once they start.

Her voice breaks over the words, “Yeah, you did.”

Sara misses Ava.

Misses  _ her  _ Ava.

A woman that no longer existed, a woman that would never exist again.

This was a mistake. It wasn't moving on, but prolonging the pain. She's not sure why she thought this was a good idea, but she knows now that she can't do this anymore.

That she never could.

That she had to end this one way or another.

“Hey, how about you and I go on a trip today?”

 

 

*

 

 

“I hope you know what you're doing, Captain.”

“Me too,” Sara says softly. She had instructed Gideon not to track them, for this trip in the jumpship to be almost completely at random.

To pick a time that meant nothing to her.

But a  _ place _ that did.

It doesn't take long to get there, never does, barely a moment. But it feels like an eternity. Sitting in the jumpship with Ava beside her, having already made up her mind about what she was going to do.

“Give me your arm,” Sara says, when the ship has stopped. 

Ava obeys without question, holding it out, and only making a small noise of protest when Sara removes her time courier. “That's government property.”

“I promise I’ll return it,” Sara says, even though they both know better.

The place where she's taken them too doesn't seem like much really. An open stretch of rocky land that drops off at the end, a cliff leading down to ice cold water below. 

“Where are we,” Ava asks, tugging her arms around herself, a small protection against the wind that whips at both of them.

“It doesn't matter.”

Another lie. 

She does not turn back to look at Ava to see if this one is believed. Instead Sara makes her way over the the cliffs edge. She used to come here, years ago, with Nyssa, back when they used to sneak away from Nanda Parbat hoping for a little moment that was theirs alone.

But it is years before Nyssa will ever find this spot.

Years before she is even born and Sara…

“I used to come here, a lifetime ago, when I was training with the League of Assassins,” Sara speaks. More to the wind and the waves, than to the woman beside her. “There was so much hurting and killing and I thought for a second about stepping over the edge. How easy it would all be.”

“You didn't,” Ava points out.

Sara lets out a small laugh, “Obviously not. Of course, I still died.”

“So have I,” Ava says, so suddenly, as if caught off guard by the realization. As if it were not a core part of her programming. As if were not the very reason they were here.

They're both silent. Standing there together, looking out over the water, the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. 

It would hurt.

But what is pain anymore.

Pain is the feeling that lingers in Sara’s chest. That has lingered there for years, long before even her own death and rebirth. A feeling that had never left, but has lessen for just a moment. 

Once.

Because of a woman that was now gone.

Sara’s eyes burn with tears. This is mourning. Here and now finally. As she had failed to do for so long. 

“I'm your activator,” Sara says, the words already making her chest tight. Already hard to force out. “So you have to do whatever I say, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay then-”

“I love you. I'd do whatever you wanted even if it wasn't in my programming.”

_ I love you.  _

Her Ava had never said those three words.

Never had the chance.

And that hurts most of all.

Hurts so much that Sara cannot stop the tears. Cannot stop how easily they come. Sudden and uncontrollable. 

Hadn't she lost enough?

Didn't she deserve someone going easily just once?

“Sara-”

“Don't touch me,” she manages through the tears. Knowing too well that that is all it would take. A familiar touch, and she'd lose all of her resolve.

“Jump off the cliff.”

For once, Ava questions her orders. “What?”

“Jump off the cliff.”

Repeating it does not make it easier.

“I don't understand?”

“Jump off the cliff.”

“Is this a test? Sara, please, I-”

“Why can't you just do this one thing for me,” Sara asks. Her voice breaking, the tears too much to hold in. When she twists to look at Ava, there is only confusion in the other woman’s features.

“I've never shown any inclinations towards suicidal tendencies before,” Ava insists. “I don't understand, why would I jump off the cliff? I could die!”

“Just - Just do it - I need you to,” sentences are harder to form now, even more so when Ava is still looking at her like  _ that _ . “If you - if you love me - you will - please just-”

“I don't want to die,” Ava says. So real, and so human that Sara could honestly believe that she was. Tears gathering in Ava’s eyes now. Confusion replaced by fright. “Please, don't make me do this - Please - I don't want to do this - I’m scared - I love you so much Sara, I -”

“Don't say that-”

“It's true, I love -”

“You're not -”

“You.”

“Her.”

Sara means to take a step forward. To push instead of pull, but she can't make her body work right. Her heart too heavy, her eyes too blurry from her tears.

She falls.

Stumbles forward.

The pain almost too much.

But Ava catches her, holds onto her sleeve, holds her in place steady and sure. Holds Sara in her arms like the woman she lost once used to.

So close that it could almost be real. It could almost be enough. 

People always say that it's supposed to get easier with time.  

It doesn't.

“They just would've sent another one to replace you.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
